the mountain tarns could boast of ice several feet thick all the
winter. We heard rumours of far-inland lakes, across which heavily-laden
bullock-teams could pass in perfect safety for three months of the year,
and we grumbled at the light film over our own large ponds, which would
not bear even my little terrier's weight after mid-day: and yet it was
cold enough at night, during our short bright winters, to satisfy the
most icy-minded person. I think I have mentioned before that the wooden
houses in New Zealand, especially those roughly put together up-country,
are by no means weather-tight. Disagreeable as this may be, it is
doubtless the reason of the extraordinary immunity from colds and
coughs which we hill-dwellers enjoyed. Living between walls formed
by inch-boards over-lapping each other, and which can only be made to
resemble English rooms by being canvassed and papered inside, the pure
fresh air finds its way in on all sides. A hot room in winter is an
impossibility, in spite of drawn curtains and blazing fires, therefore
the risk of sudden changes of temperature is avoided.

Some such theory as this is absolutely necessary to account for the
wonderfully good health enjoyed by all, in the most capricious and
trying climate I have ever come across. When a strong nor'-wester was
howling down the glen, I have seen the pictures on my drawing-room walls
blowing out to an angle of 45 degrees, although every door and window in
the little low wooden structure had been carefully closed for hours. It
has happened to me more than once, on getting up in the morning, to find
my clothes, which had been laid on a chair beneath my bedroom window
overnight, completely covered by powdered snow, drifting in through the
ill-fitting casement. This same window was within a couple of feet of my
bed, and between me and it was neither curtain nor shelter of any sort.
Of a winter's evening I have often been obliged to wrap myself up in a
big Scotch maud, as I sat, dressed in a high linsey gown, by a blazing
fire, so hard was the frost outside; but by ten o'clock next morning
I would be loitering about the verandah, basking in the sunshine, and
watching the light flecks of cloud-wreaths and veils floating against
an Italian-blue sky. Yet such is the inherent discontent of the human
heart, that instead of rejoicing in this lovely mid-day sunshine, we
actually mourned over the vanished ice which at daylight had been found,
by a much-envied